Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

We’ve had a busy time recently clearing bramble before it takes over the place – but we’ve left some for blackberries in August. There is still a lot of clearing and tidying to do in other areas, such as our fruit cage and asparagus beds, but with a little help we’ll get there.

In recent times, we have planted out potatoes, carrots, parsnips, strawberries, broad beans, cabbage etc. and have also started sowing. In our polytunnel, we have seedling such as tomatoes, sweetcorn, broad beans and have just sown peppers, pumpkin, chervil and dwarf French beans. More to follow soon.

We are here most Saturday mornings from 10 till 1 if anyone wants to drop in and have a chat with us and find out what’s going on. We have plenty of growing space here, so a warm welcome awaits for anyone who is interested in getting some experience in growing their own veg.

We’re also looking forward to welcoming new people at the Big Dig Day on Saturday 27th April anytime from 12 to 4. We hope to get the pizza oven up and running so we can have a party then.

We are the grateful recipients of a mobile, wood fired pizza oven from the Loughborough Farm. The 3rd of November 2018 was a bright and pleasant Saturday, just right for an outdoor pizza party. We finally gave our pizza oven a trial run in the garden and it was a great success! Thanks to everyone who helped out and brought ingredients.

Oli from the farm came over to show us how to stack the firewood, and get the oven up and running. Just 90 minutes later the oven was hot enough to cook, and we were pressing the dough and making a range of toppings. These included making vegan pizzas! A generous amount of beer was consumed as well.

Our output increased as the afternoon progressed until we were even baking two pizzas at a time. The range and quality of the pizzas was impressive, especially as some of the ingredients were herbs and veg grown in our own garden.

It was an excellent opportunity for gardeners to socialise with friends and family. Now we know that the oven works, we hope to have more pizza parties over the winter which will be open to all.

The harvest from last Sunday’s dig day – raspberries, broad beans and asparagus

There wasn’t a huge turnout on our dig day last Sunday. However, there was lots of harvesting to be done. Our raspberries are now growing strong and there was a whole tubful to harvest. They have continued to grow this week too.

The first of our broad beans are coming through too. And our asparagus continues to grow very fast!

Carrots were planted out in the broad bean bed last week, and some general tidying, weeding and watering was done too.

THERE WILL BE NO DIG THIS SUNDAY. All of our committee members are away. However, we will be in the garden again on SATURDAY 24 JUNE FROM 1PM.

This is because that’s the day of the Ruskin Park Summer Fete and so the park should be busier than usual. We hope to open up our garden and also to have a stall at the Fete to advertise the community garden.

If any volunteers are around on the afternoon of the 24th, and want to volunteer to help out for an hour or two, please get in touch by emailing info@ruskinparkcommunitygarden.org and let us know what times you are free. We will try and organise a rota so that we have enough people throughout the day.

Even if you haven’t been up to doing much gardening, sitting on a stall for an hour and helping give our leaflets about the garden will still be a huge help.

A great team turned up and we were able to plant out all our tomatoes from the polytunnel. The potato beds were weeded and then we sprinkled compost and other fertiliser across all the beds. Also some lime trees saplings from Trees for Cities were planted right by our entrance gate. We hope to do more tidying around the beds on Sunday 28 May and maybe some sowing too. Hope to see you all there.

Things are changing fast in the garden now. Our tomato plants are looking good after we planted them out a few weeks ago. Broad bean plants are doing well. And we have peppers growing in the polytunnel.

Apples growing in our garden

There were only a couple of us last Sunday, but we did some weeding, tied up our tomato plants so they have stronger support as they grow, and harvested some berries. In our fruit cage we now have black currants, red currants and raspberries growing. And we also have apples!

We also gave everything a good water in preparation for the hot days that followed.

We’ll be in the garden most Sundays from 2-4pm over the summer, and there will be lots to do and more things to harvest. Come along and give us a hand.

A belated and very big thank you to the volunteers from GoodGym Brixton who came along a few weeks ago. They cleared a couple of our beds of weeds and dug over the soil, ready for us to plant out our tomatoes. With the British summer bringing an abundance of rain we need all the help we can get to keep the garden in shape. Thank you very much!

We had some excitement during our dig day last Sunday as some of our bees had swarmed out and gathered in one of the crab apple trees. Sharon, our beekeeper, was on hand to help guide them into new homes.

Some of our bees entering a new home

Apparently the bees have expanded their population so much that some of them left the hives to find alternative accommodation! So they must be liking life at Ruskin Park.

We had quite a few volunteers drop in to help with the dig. Joe made a new structure for our peas, which were planted out last week. Tom and Sadie helped to dig over bed 1 (and unearth some potatoes in the process). We planted out our swede seedlings in the bed.

Our new structures for our peas

Justin dug over bed 7, where our garlic is growing, and dug up some of our chinese artichokes.

And Paula helped to weed the mandala bed and plant out some new herbs, kindly donated by Maickel from Ruskin Park House.

We now have some red veined sorrel, hyssop, chamomile, burnet, fennel, red fennel and lovage growing in the garden, as well as our longstanding oregano, thyme, marjoram, rosemary, sage and mint plants.

We’ll be planting out more of our seedlings in coming weeks and getting the beds ready for planting. Feel free to pop in and give us a hand.

Sunday

We’ll be in the garden this Sunday from 2pm to 4pm. Join us to plant out some broad beans and peas, harvest the last of our leeks and prepare some of the beds for the rest of our crops.

Saturday

There’s also a gardening event by the bowling green on Saturday from 11am to 3pm. We’ll be joining the Friends of Ruskin Park and Trees for Cities to help get the green looking lovely for summer. See the Ruskin Park gardening day 14th May poster for location details.